If you're a fundamentalist Christian, then they're bad because they are, because rational thinking is too hard. Not to mention that it is impossible to be a Muslim atheist, as the two are mutually exclusive.

If you're a fundamentalist Christian, then they're bad because they are, because rational thinking is too hard. Not to mention that it is impossible to be a Muslim atheist, as the two are mutually exclusive.

Religions should unite, not divide

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Yeah, well apparently, most people aren't ready to admit to themselves that everything they were taught was the truth, was in fact a lie. Thus continuing to believe irrational thinking and teaching their children the same nonsense.

I have no problem with that. Only thing is every website I have ever been on that has discussions with religion goes something along the lines on how this thread is going. You get a group of people with one opinion, someone comes in with their views, disagreements everywhere, flaming, and ending in a big mess. The conspiracy theory thread has been like that, one can only guess where a discussion on religion will take us.

Here in hungary Education is still like in soviet times, but It is beginning to turn backwards. I think much of the former communist countries are having the same problems, But the education in Eastern Central, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe is still better than the education (atleast what I heard of it)of the UK, the US, and France.

Astronomical education comes late (9th grade) but is pretty thorough (concerning the solar system and our galaxy anyhow) But it might just be my school, as I don't think the required amount is as good. Still, in my class of 25, there are 4 people (including me) who have a fascination with space.

As for my personal experience in the US, I lived in silicon Valley for a while (7 years), and the education there is very high tiered, as we started learning about astronomy and the other sciences in first grade, but it is probably the exception and not the norm.

In the school system where I grew up most of our astronomy education was in 5th grade I think, or maybe as early as 3rd, I can't remember. But that school system has generally been ranked better than most schools in the country, and also that was more than a decade ago. It seems to me that education has been getting much worse as time has gone on.

I had a chat with my 12-year old cousin at my father's birthday yesterday, and as it turns out they're actually getting astronomy as a proper, separate subject at his school. He's at a gymnasium (the highest level of middle school in our system) so this doesn't mean it's taught on all middle schools here, but it still sounds good.

Honestly, Belgian schools are ranked among the absolute top, we generally find the French and Dutch systems a bit retarded and think of americans as idiots. (That's mostly because we get to see redneck, christian and republican opinions on the news. How the hell does 80% of the people support the freedom of carrying guns, but rejects the freedom of gay marriage?) Yet, I believe astronomy gets far too few attention, we only see it in the last year before going to college and that's really not enough to get a good picture of what the universe looks like. That while we've been studying the human cells for over 4 years and we score the better than almost any European country at maths and languages.